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How We Potty Trained Our Toddler

Getting away from styling for a little bit to talk all things potty training. Oh the dreaded potty training! This has been a requested post since I mentioned on Instagram that we were potty training our almost 3 year old son. He will be 3 at the end of this month, so I knew it was time to give it a try. A friend of mine had mentioned the 3 Day Potty Training Guide. Since I am a first time mom with no prior experience, I thought why not! I didn’t know any other way to do it and she had success potty training all 3 of her children using this method. I waited until we had 3 full days (or more) with nothing to do because I knew we would be at home those full days. About 2-3 days leading up to the day, I kept telling Dockery that he was going to start using the potty soon and saying bye bye to diapers. We had a plan in place, when he would go number 1 he would get 3 mini M&M’s and a few Pirates Booties; number 2 would be rewarded with big M&M’s (normal size M&M’s) and he thought this was the coolest thing and was super excited.

The 1st morning we woke up and said bye bye to all the diapers. I actually let him throw the diapers away and it was undies and a t-shirt all day from then on. I knew we would be home for 3 days so I stocked up on snacks and food for meals. Luckily, it rained all 3 days we were inside so I totally fine with it! The morning started off with him going on the potty first thing. I thought we were going to be good to go! By midmorning, he was having accident after accident. I knew this was normal and kept encouraging him to tell me when he had to go to the potty. That’s pretty much the key with this method – they tell you when they have to go potty. It’s not a lot of asking them if they have to go and putting them on the potty to try and go. The accidents are actually a good thing the first day so they get the feeling that they have to go. By the end of the day, I was pretty worn out but knew I needed to keep with it to make it work.

Day 2 was full of accidents again. I still encouraged him to tell me when he had to go to the potty. He would have an accident so I rushed him straight to the potty so he would start to realize and catch on to the whole potty thing. By the end of day 2, he had not pooped and I was getting a little stressed.

Day 3 brought success of number 2 on the potty and fewer accidents! I thought we would be able to get out of the house but I decided to stay in and fully complete the training. A few accidents happened but they were definitely getting less and less. We were taking multiple trips to the potty all day. I could tell he was still learning when he actually had to go.

Over the next week, we continued to work on it everyday. I would constantly tell him to let mommy know when he had to go to the potty and always asked him if his underwear were dry. By the 4th day, we took a trip to Target with no accidents! I will say that even though it is a 3 day guide, it really took him about a week to really be fully potty trained. The next week he attended a summer camp and the teachers were so impressed with him telling them when he had to go and no accidents! I am so glad I used this guide even though those first few days were pretty stressful. He now tells me all the time when he has to go to the potty. Something I will note that is not recommended in the guide is to completely do away with diapers at night too. We really like our sleep over here and I was not ready to wake up in the middle of the night and have to change sheets. So, he wears a pull up at night. But the great thing is that right when he wakes up, he yells out that he has to go to the potty. His pull up isn’t dry when he wakes up, so I know he’s going in the middle of the night. We will eventually tackle that, but for now I am so proud of him for how far he came in such a short amount of time. I highly recommend this guide if you are starting to potty train soon or if you are already in the middle of it.

I hope this was helpful for you! If you have any questions, I am so happy to try and help! If there are 2 tips I can give – give yourself patience and have wine ready at the end of the day. 🙂